The Training Day TV Series Is Shaping Up To Be All Kinds Of Awful

If you loved the 2001 movie starring Denzel Washington, then you probably aren’t going to like this.

Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke In Training Day Image Warner Bros.

Details of what we can expect from the upcoming Training Day TV series, based on the Oscar winning movie of the same name, have been revealed and fans of the film won’t be happy with what’s in store.

Denzel Washington won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as corrupt cop Detective Alonzo Harris alongside new rookie partner Officer Jake Hoyt, ably played by Ethan Hawke who earned an Oscar nomination for his troubles.

The film was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who went on to enjoy success with movies like Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer and Southpaw, a series based on the show is due to arrive on CBS in February.

Training Day The Series Image CBS

Good news is Fuqua is on board again, and this time teaming up with Will Beall, a retired LA Police detective best known for his work as a writer on Gangster Squad, who will be producing the series.

But anyone expecting more of what they loved about the original movie could be left sorely disappointed.

Beall revealed they had taken inspiration from Noah Hawley’s work on the Fargo series, namely that the series ‘exists in the same universe as the film’, but is not simply a re-tread of the original, reported STLToday.

Unfortunately, it’s the other details surrounding the series that should have fans concerned, mainly because it sounds completely different, but not in a good way.

Denzel Washington In the original

For example, remember how dark and gritty the original movie was? Remember how cool that was? Yeah, well that’s gone.

According to Beall, while Training Day the movie is an ‘iconic, classic crime story’, the series will be more ‘fun’, with a ‘lighter tone’. Ugh.

Perhaps the biggest concern comes from the casting decisions. While the task of replacing Washington was always likely to be a sizeable one, few could have predicted that they would bring in Bill Paxton – yeah, the hick guy from such movies as Aliens and Titanic – who will be the main lead alongside Justin Cornwell.

No, us neither.

‘It wasn’t a racial conversation,’ Fuqua told the news source, adding ‘when we found out Bill had interest, it was like, that’s a good idea. Switch it and do that’.

The details surrounding Paxton’s character don’t inspire a lot of confidence either. In fact, what they do inspire is a strange feeling of déjà vu – as in, we’ve seen a dozen cop shows with a character like the one outlined.

“He’s a gunfighter. He’s almost been pulled out of a time capsule and put in modern times, because he has this old kind of gunslinger code of honour. He’s tough, but he’s fair. And he’s kind of woken up in this digital age, and he doesn’t really know quite what to make of it,” Paxton explained in the same interview.

Great. So he’s basically Raylan Givens from Justified mixed with a bit of Vic Mackey from The Shield along with the personality traits of characters like Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy and Lucas Hood from Banshee. Way to go guys.